


68. whispered wars

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [224]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9636224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Before Sarah and Helena were born, their mother was cursed by a witch.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: bugs]

Before Sarah and Helena were born, their mother was cursed by a witch. She won’t say why. Sarah and Helena have tried to ask her, over and over again, but she just won’t say why.

But the point: she was cursed. You can’t tell, to look at her. You have to look at Helena and Sarah for that – look at the way Sarah is holding Helena’s hand. Look at the way both of their mouths are stubbornly, mutinously shut.

Eventually Sarah will open her mouth to speak. Look at that too. Look at the birds that come flapping out, singing desperate. Sparrows and pigeons and those little brown birds that don’t have names – they are terrified, they are forcing themselves out between Sarah’s teeth. When Sarah speaks in rooms the birds bump into the ceiling over and over again; sometimes they are so terrified that their hearts stop, and they fall to the ground.

Helena doesn’t open her mouth at all. Helena knows better by now.

Or: she knows better, and she knows to only do it when the two of them are alone. So here they are, alone at the top of a hill. The grass is green. The wind is blowing. Somewhere, wordless birds sing in the treetops.

“You should’ve gotten birds,” Sarah says, with the easy weight of a familiar argument. A robin squirms its way out over her tongue and flaps off, still slick with spit.

Helena swallows. She seems to be weighing over her words. “No,” she says finally. The word is very slow. She closes her mouth afterwards, but it doesn’t matter: the scorpion crawls out anyways. Small word, small scorpion. The smaller ones are the more venomous, but how would Helena know that?

The two of them watch as it crawls away across the ground, stinger up. Sarah used to try and kill them. Helena would always cry, or scream, or dry heave. Now Sarah just lets the poison go.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Bet you’d make prettier birds than me. ‘sides, if I had scorpions people’d stop _looking_ at us, ‘cause they’d know I’d read a bloody dictionary at them.”

Birds take flight. Some of them are beautiful. None of them could kill you – maybe that’s why Sarah is glaring at them. Or maybe it’s not. Sarah knows, but she won’t say. Helena knows, but she can’t say.

And Helena says nothing. She just rests her head on Sarah’s shoulder, gives an exhausted sigh through her nose. She is tired. Sarah knows. They are both very, very tired of this curse.

“Find her,” Helena whispers. Deathstalker.

“Who?” Chickadee.

“Witch.” Creeping scorpion.

“Mum won’t even tell us where she went. Even if we found her, don’t think she’d care, yeah?” Six crows and a sparrow. The crows set on the sparrow the second they’re all skyborn, rip it to pieces. Sarah doesn’t know if all birds are that vicious. Maybe they get more vicious when she’s angry. Maybe it’s just her, the way she is.

“Dictionary,” Helena whispers. The scorpion that falls out of her mouth is pale, and hits the ground before heading for Sarah’s legs. Sarah coaxes it onto her fingers, and it crawls over and under them. It would never hurt her. That’s just the way it works.

“Would you?” Sarah says.

Helena doesn’t answer. The only sound is the flapping of wings. The sky above them is thickening with birds already. Soon they’ll have to find another hill, if Sarah wants to keep talking.

Helena bites her lip. Slowly, hesitantly, she nods. Then she opens her mouth. “Yes,” she says. “If I could make them go away. Yes.”

Her mouth spits out an emperor. Eight inches long. Just the same color as Sarah’s crows.

“Alright, then,” Sarah says. A rare cardinal shoves its way from between her teeth, bright red and furious. It lands on Sarah’s fingers, shakes its feathers, flutters its wings. On Sarah’s knuckles the pale scorpion arches a stinger. Sarah and Helena watch to see which one of the two of them will be a killer first.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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